A prisoner of Spectrum, I suddenly lost access with Thunderbird to my POP3 email traffic on their email server. Only two days ago, all was OK, but now, I cannot use TB at all-- the old email accounts and their archive of messages (stored locally) are simply no longer displayed in the left vertical column. Of course, I immediately contacted Spectrum techs about what happened, but only one of four techs contacted could do more than create a new IMAP account in the name of the original POP3 account, restoring read and write messaging access to the Spectrum email server. However, access to the original folder with all my email is still beyond reach. In an effort to solve the problem, I decided to use the single IMAP account I created under Spectrum tech direction, using new IMAP and SMTP port values they specified. My own innovation is to use the TB account setup options (server settings) to re-connect TB to its original local folder. So far, that approach has worked to connect one IMAP account folder with its POP3 original local folder. Encouraged, I created another IMAP account, attempting to direct TB to its POP3 local folder. Unfortunately, that connection brings the error, "The local directory path D:\Thunderbird\Profiles\v7hmlunf.default\Mail\pop-server.sc.rr.com is not suitable for message storage. Please select another directory." My question-- are POP3 folders in some way different in structure from IMAP folders? TB already has created a separate folder system named "IMAP mail", as though it is not disposed to use former POP3 folders. Thanks to a system image created a day before all this problem, I can restore my entire original TB setup to the local drive, so whatever changes I have made by mistake are not permanent, and my original POP3 email messages are safe. Because of the inconsistency with re-connection of an IMAP account with a POP3 folder, I am tempted to start over.